Youth is Revolting
by storypaint
Summary: Youth in Revolt 2009 . Nick has been in juvenile hall for a week when Sheeni sends him a letter. She's breaking up with him.


Title: Youth is Revolting  
Length: 1345 words  
Pairing: Nick/Sheeni; Nick/Bernice; mostly Nick gen  
Author's Note: A coda to the movie, which felt oddly unfinished. K+ for language, slight sexual themes.

* * *

Nick has been in juvenile hall for a week when Sheeni sends him a letter. She's breaking up with him. He stares at the page like he expects it to leap up and bite him, like it already hasn't, sinking poison into his arm, making him numb.

She needs her space, Sheeni says. They are sixteen, and though she enjoyed making love with him, three months is an eternity at sixteen. She has experiences she still wants to try. She's learning to conjugate French verbs. Trent is helping. He's not so much of a Tennis Doubles Ken doll as she had thought. Sheeni loves Nick, but she's not in love with him. She's sure he'll understand.

"There will be others," Francois says, looking sulky as he leans against the cafeteria's wall, against the NO SMOKING sign, and lights his cigarette.

"I hate your shoes," Nick hisses back, aloud because he isn't thinking, and because Alfred in bunk twelve thinks that this insult is directed at him, Nick gets two black eyes at free time, even though he tried to explain that everyone here has the same uniform, the same shoes, and it wasn't anything to do with Alfred in particular. With a name like Alfred, the former football player has a hair-trigger and no interest in excuses.

Nick has been looking for an excuse to cry, anyway. Francois stands back and hurls abuse, spitting it out in no particular direction, at Nick and at Alfred and at life.

"Sucks to be you," he says cheerfully when the guards rush out to break up the altercation. Nick rolls his eyes before he passes out.

*

The juvie psychologist is fresh out of college, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and the stupidest person Nick has ever met. He tries to be polite.

"So your parents are divorced?" she says, paging through his file and pausing with her finger on the notation, as if she's hit the jackpot.

"Yes," Nick answers. "I usually live with my mom because she needs the child support."

"Mhmm, I see," she answers absently, turning a few more pages. "And were you abused as a child?"

"No!" Nick exclaims indignantly. She shakes her head and scribbles something down on a small yellow legal pad. Her handwriting is big and round and he can read upside-down, "defensive when asked about child abuse."

"Bitches," Francois pronounces. Nick sighs and nods. The psychologist beams.

"We have support groups for people like you, don't worry! You're not alone. You don't need to act up to get attention."

She gets up and turns around to page through the wall of pamphlets behind her and Nick puts a hand over his face and counts the minutes until the session is over. Too many.

He knows he needs to stop this before it escalates. When Francois is involved, everything escalates. So he takes a deep breath and says quietly, "It was about a girl."

"Oh," the psychologist says, pausing, turning back to him "Do you want to tell me about her?"

Nick nods. Francois spits on the floor. "I'm out," he announces, and for the first time in several whirlwind weeks, Nick is alone in his own head.

He likes it.

*

He is a model student in juvie, the kind that officials point to and say, "This is a demonstration of how well the system works." Besides the fight in the first week, Nick keeps his head down, hides any new bruises he acquires, and manages to sleep through an escape attempt that Francois would probably have been leading.

His parents haven't visited more than once. He spends his birthday in juvenile hall due to a complete lack of forethought when planning his stupid revolution, and his mother comes for an hour, new boyfriend on her arm. His dad comes for two, but he spends most of that time making out with his girlfriend and lecturing Nick about his actions.

"You'll be paying for that car-- my car *and* your mother's-- for years," he says, scowling at his son. "Better look forward to getting a job as soon as you get out. If any job would hire a juvenile delinquent."

"Yes, Dad," Nick answers miserably.

"And don't think about staying with me again. I have enough on my mind planning the wedding," his father says, staring soppily at Lacey. She waves at him as if they aren't two feet apart in the same room.

"Don't worry about it," Nick says.

Both of his parents forget to wish him happy birthday, but he is impressed that they remembered to visit.

*

Nick has been out of juvie for three months, holed up in his room for the most part, trying to piece his record collection back together (a fruitless endeavor). He works at McDonald's due to antidiscriminatory policies, and this is his first day off in two weeks. He can still smell grease in his hair, even after three showers.

He is thinking about calling Lefty, but in his absence Lefty has somehow grown balls and managed to ask Millie Filbert, the love of his life, on a date. She turned him down and didn't even manage to pronounce his name correctly, but Lefty got a date with her slightly-less-attractive best friend Jennifer Taylor. Jennifer doesn't mind Lefty's particular problem. So Nick doesn't see him very much.

"Nick, visitor!" his mother drawls up the stairs, and curiously he comes down, stopping still on the fourth one from the bottom when he realizes why the dark-haired girl staring at him is vaguely familiar. Bernice smiles at him.

"This one seems almost normal," Nick's mother tells him, not bothering to keep her voice quiet. She waggles her eyebrows and then goes back to the kitchen. Nick can hear the particular giggle that precludes a make-out session and tries to tune that out.

"Bernice?" he says, disbelieving, descending the rest of the stairs slowly.

"Nick!" she says, wrapping her arms around his neck and planting kisses on him. He doesn't wrap his arms around her, hands sticking out stiffly behind her. She pulls back to look at him, hands still firm around his neck, and her mascara is running. Nick is incredibly uncomfortable.

"I've missed you," she says, nuzzling him. Carefully he pries her off his person.

"Bernice, what are you doing here?" he asks. "How did you find me?"

She seems to miss the panic in his voice, batting her eyelashes at him coyly. "It wasn't too difficult. I just looked up Twisp in the phonebook."

Nick takes a moment to wonder why his mother never returned to her maiden name.

Bernice leans forward, fisting a hand in his shirt. "Let's run away together, Nicky. Just you and me. My mom doesn't even know I'm gone yet."

Nick's eyes widen. From somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear a match, and then Francois is blowing smoke in his ear. "She isn't bad," Francois mutters. "Bet she has good tits under that t-shirt."

Nicotine is addictive, right? Even in his mind? Nick inhales and remembers and then he's dragging Bernice up to his bedroom.

"I don't know about running away," he says breathily, slightly panicked. "But what do you think of Frank Sinatra?"

She smiles, wiping her dripping mascara onto a hand that she then runs down his chest, irrevocably staining his shirt.

"I don't know," she says. "Show me?"

Nick nods and puts on a record. Francois hums impatiently, and Nick ignores him.

"Stupid shoes," he mumbles, and Bernice looks up from her apparently-seductive pose on his bed.

"Yes, darling?" she says.

"Nothing," he answers, a little louder, and sits down on the very edge of the bed, away from her.

"There's something I should tell you," he says. "About a girl."

Bernice's face hardens.

What with one thing and another (kidnapping, even if he didn't actually do it, is a serious crime), it's no wonder that he ends up in juvie again.

Nick kinda likes it. At least it's quiet.


End file.
